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Comment by warent | Hacker News Reader

It's a fair point. One thought that comes to mind is Mark Zuckerberg. No doubt Mark has grit, work ethic, and level of intelligence greater than most people. Even if he never founded Facebook, these are some of the key ingredients for above-average success and he still had a high likelihood to become very wealthy.

Where things get weird is that he is one of the wealthiest people in the world by a large margin. It's weird because it's due to the most potent ingredient: luck. This doesn't invalidate how extraordinary he is, it's just an important factor. Right place, right time, right family, etc.

So that has made him one of the wealthiest people in the world, meaning he can shape society and move governments. Do you think it makes sense for that kind of power to come down to a roll of the dice?

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Yeah, it makes a lot of sense for that sort of power to be a dice roll. If the system is completely deterministic then people start gaming it and the result is politics. It is better to allow the dice to roll than to mandate everyone goes with a bad choice.

I see a call in your comment for rewards to be given out of innate qualities rather than observed outcomes. If you have a method for determining that; how about we do a small trial in politics first - where it would do more good - and argue about how well it worked? There is no evidence in my view that it is possible to determine people's innate qualities from a distance. The difference between a genius and a fool is too slim. It is doubtful that there has ever been a method to do that which worked.

Between, say, the American way of embarrassing riches and the EU way of equality I note one didn't produce many tech companies.

Interesting argument that gives me something to think about. Though the last line doesn't make much sense to me.

  Between, say, the American way of embarrassing riches and the EU way of equality I note one didn't produce many tech companies

You seem to be implying that producing many tech companies is somehow indicative of a superior result. It's borderline heresy to argue otherwise in HN of all places, but are we certain about that?

> Between, say, the American way of embarrassing riches and the EU way of equality I note one didn't produce many tech companies.

This is a great point that is often ignored. People like to claim that X or Y EU nation is better governed than the US or enjoys greater happiness. However they are also beneficiaries of all the innovation that has come out of America for them to have those standards of living - things like the smartphones and the Internet in recent times.

How about www (invented at CERN)?

What was invented in CERN was hypertext. WWW and internet was largely built and commercialized in US.

I think it’s fair to say that a lot of innovative technologies were invented in Europe, but most of them end up being commercialized in US due to market incentives and the whole funding and support infrastructure these incentives created.

By "inventing the WWW" I meant designing HTTP and HTML as well as implementing the browser and the server software. This all was done by Berners-Lee around 1990.

>these are certainly all the ingredients for above-average success and that's expected and he certainly would have become very wealthy

(My emphasis).

That's simply not true. People nearly always ignore the element of luck that allowed success to happen, and it's the biggest mistake that people make in terms of their politics, IMO. There are countless examples of people's success which they put down to characteristics such as these, but they ignore the luck that allowed those things to come to fruition (and indeed the blind luck that allowed them to have the skills in the first place). They didn't happen to many others with the same characteristics, who no-one has ever heard of.

Sure, we're in agreement, I just didn't word it properly. Updated

By that definition all men are born equal and the only thing that differentiates them is luck. Luck to be born somewhere, luck to attend some school, luck to earn money, luck to start a business, luck to have a physical prowess.

Floyd Mayweather Jr., arguably the most successful boxer so far is also luck? Luck to be born a great boxer?

I've been at the right place at the right time many, many times and totally failed to recognize the opportunity, as did most everyone else.

> the blind luck that allowed them to have the skills in the first place

Oh phooey. I don't know anyone who was touched by the wand of the Magic Skill Fairy and suddenly was a chess master, a virtuoso guitar player, a physicist, a champion bodybuilder, etc.

> They didn't happen to many others with the same characteristics, who no-one has ever heard of.

Because they failed to recognize the opportunity, or couldn't be bothered to do the work to take advantage of it.

What do you replace the luck with?

We already elect governments and they already have immense resources, more resources than even the richest individuals. So replacing "luck" with democratic election probably just ends up with more and bigger government? That just concentrates all power in government which I think would be worse than the problem you see.

> So that has made him one of the wealthiest people in the world, meaning he can shape society and move governments. Do you think it makes sense for that kind of power to come down to a roll of the dice?

Everything is a roll of the dice if you stretch it enough.

All the politicians, all the wealthy and rich people are right place, right time and right skill set.

How much luck goes into becoming a successful politician?

I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just wondering if things are any better in government roles.

That can be said for anyone, including our elected leaders. Obama was "lucky" to be gifted with high intelligence (genetic lottery), good public speaking skills and high extroversion, which eventually led to his election as POTUS. Does this mean his outsized influence was undeserving?

We need a rubric that doesn't entail boiling people down to their causal antecedents, because doing so doesn't let us dismbiguate between worthy and unworthy - everyone and everything is a byproduct of this definition of luck.

> Do you think it makes sense for that kind of power to come down to a roll of the dice?

Yes. Do you think it makes sense to look at human prosperity and say “there’s a large random component to who gets wealthy and who does not. Lets change that from “random” to “I decide.”” Do you see why other people would rather have wealth distributed by a randomized meritorious process than by bureaucratic fiat?

Luck or Uncle Sam?

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